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I have this head cannon, y'see and I can't really talk about it in real life, so now it's tumblr's problem. Yaaaaay.
Okay, here it is. This is an a/b/o au. The upside down has its own scent, right? And it scents COLD. And only a select few in Hawkins know that scent. Of course, Steve Harrington is one of them. That day in the field, in s2, when the Mind Flayer was taking over Will, what if the high school gym was close enough to that field that everyone could smell it? That overwhelming scent of dark, cold, evil. Steve is the only one who recognizes it .
He'd never run so fast in all his life.
Steve is the first on the scene, sees Will just standing there, his own pup scent overwhelmed by cold. Steve has always run hot, and he learned a long time ago, due to absent parents, how to scent warmth.
He goes up to Will, and just hugs him, scents warm, because it makes sense, right? The upside down was making it cold, so Steve had to warm him up. When the rest of the crew find them, Steve is just holding Will close, scenting warm, and encouraging him to fight off the upside down.
"it's okay, Will, you're doing great, you're so strong, pup, you can do it, you're so strong, stronger than anything that place can throw at you, come on, kiddo, you got this..." Etc., Etc.
When the others arrive, he tells them to scent warm like he is, cause it'll help pull Will out of this dark place. They all end up in this big group hug: Steve, Will, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Max, Joyce. Then, when the basketball team shows up looking for Steve, he just looks at Hargrove, and is like, you're basically a human furnace, get over here and help us get this pup warm.
Fyi, Steve is obviously an omega, and Billy is an alpha, so who is he to refuse.
Finally, Will wakes up mind flayer-free, and he just clings to Steve while sobbing. He accidentally calls Steve mama, which just makes him melt, and then Steve and Joyce and the kids, including Max, take Will home and just gives him all the love he deserves. The next day, Steve takes all the kids to meet the Hawkins High Dungeon Master, Eddie Munson, to help Will feel better
And that, my friends, is how Steve adopts all of the kids in this au. Of course, D'art is still around, so that's how Steve bonds with Dustin specifically. Dustin and Will are his favorites. Billy just kind of fell for Steve after seeing his mama bear side, as did Eddie, because I am a sucker for Harringroveson.
So I started writing something, but i don't trust myself to finish it, so i'll just ramble about it and hope people think it's decent!
My current hyperfixation is stranger things, and here's my thought: there is no way the upside down would have given the gang a whole year of peace when the gate was still open. In this au I've got floating around in my brain, I imagine that maybe it was a couple months before the tunnels started spreading, before the demodogs started spawning. I also imagine that my fave character, the main one in this au, ended things with Nancy early on, because he could see that she wasn't happy with him and he wanted to avoid an emotional trainwreck.
Because Steve wasn't spending as much time with Nancy, when he noticed that things with the upside down weren't over, he was able to take it on himself without her figuring it out. Cause Steve figures that the wheelers, the byers, heck, everyone involved from last time shouldn't have to deal with any more of this shit.
So what he did was, he started going to the old junkyard, baiting out the demodogs, and killing as many as he could with his nail bat and burning the corpses when he was done for the night.
As this was going on, he started looking out for Will, treating him normally and being there for him, because will deserves to have Steve as an extra older brother. It's not necessary to this au, but I will die on that hill.
Anyway, Steve's been doing this since around January of '84, so he's become pretty good at it. Then, that Halloween, instead of going to Tina's party, he was out there, killing monsters, but he got cut. Obviously, billy hargrove's rough-housing in basketball the next day didn't do him any favors. He ends up having to take a minute to go into the locker rooms to stitch himself up really quickly, because of course he's figured out how to do that by now. Then, billy walks in on him doing that, and promptly freaks out. Steve swears him to secrecy, because in his mind, it's fine, it's normal. He finished up basketball practice, and put the encounter out of his mind.
Later, Steve was back out there, and he had just killed the first demodog, when he heard this aborted, human-sounding, shriek. He goes to investigate, and who does he see, but billy Hargrove and eddie munson in the bus doing a deal.
Steve tried to give them an out, but of course the demodogs were swarming, so he had to deal with that threat and keep these guys safe, because Steve didn't think they should have to deal with this. They don't take the out. In fact, eddie and billy help Steve out through the events of s2.
Also, in terms of the thing with Lucas, I imagine that since Billy'd been fine with the black kids on the basketball team, Steve was able to pry out of him that he's trying to protect Lucas and max from ne*l.
Anyhow, that's the premise of this au that I've got. Like I said, I have started writing for it, but I don't trust myself to finish it or update it regularly. If anyone is interested in adopting this concept and writing their own take on it, feel free to dm me. Heck, you don't even have to do that, but I'd appreciate a dm, just so that I could read it!